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Rizla Suzuki looking for grip on the final Friday

Rizla Suzuki still has a lot of work to do in tomorrow’s final free practice session of the year after a challenging day today left them at the wrong end of the timesheets.

Loris Capirossi (P15, 1’34.248, 40 laps) couldn’t find the grip levels for his Suzuki GSV-R at Valencia today, despite trying both compounds of tyres to get the best performance from his machine. He will certainly be looking to improve considerably tomorrow to make sure he is in the best position for Sunday’s race.

Álvaro Bautista (P16, 1’34.296, 45 laps) was the hardest working rider out on the 4,005m track this afternoon as he completed 25 laps trying to get the optimum performance from his bike. He made a number of changes to the set-up of his GSV-R today and now has a clearer direction in which way to go tomorrow.

Today’s air temperatures just made it up to 20°C during this afternoon’s session, with track surface temperatures only getting to 26°C. The fastest time of the day was set by World Champion Jorge Lorenzo.

Tomorrow will see the last practice and qualifying sessions of the season as the riders make their final preparations for Sunday’s 30-lap Grand Prix, which will get underway at 14.00hrs local time (13.00hrs GMT).

Loris Capirossi:

“It has been quite difficult for us today because the conditions have been a bit colder than we expected. Like most times this season the day before first practice has been lovely, but then on the first day the temperature has dropped. We are struggling to get a good and constant feeling from the tyres, even though we tried both compounds. We have to try and discover something for tomorrow, the whole team is working hard to find a solution, but it is not easy. When it’s not that warm we have struggled to get the grip and that is how it has been today, so hopefully it will warm up for us tomorrow.”

Álvaro Bautista:

“This morning we tested different frame settings in the two bikes and I chose just one of them to continue with this afternoon. We tried a new spec with that setting, but the feeling was a little bit worse than this morning because I just couldn’t get the exit from the corners I was looking for with the softer tyres. It was a used tyre and had done more than 30-laps, so we tried a new harder compound in the front and rear, but the feeling stayed the same. Tomorrow morning we will do the same setting from this morning, but with a few changes and we will see if we can improve – I certainly hope that we do.”